Mets shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera to play in Venezuelan Winter League

Following a career year, Mets shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera will join Leones del Caracas in the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League.

Mets shortstop and bat flipper extraordinaire Asdrubal Cabrera is looking to stay busy this winter. Back in his home country of Venezuela during the offseason, Asdrubal will be joining one of the local teams that plays in the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League, the Leones del Caracas.

The Venezuelan Professional Baseball League starts up in early October and goes all the way through the end of December with the playoffs starting in January. It’s a pretty grueling league that consists of only eight teams that play dozens of games against each other.

Asdrúbal Cabrera llegó ayer al país y ya está uniformado con el equipo tomando su primera práctica de bateo en el Universitario pic.twitter.com/6XOqvR5OyE

— Leones del Caracas (@leones_cbbc) December 12, 2016

Like other winter leagues, it’s not generally believed that the level of play reaches even Triple-A levels. This is why players like Michael Conforto prefer to not play in them at times, and instead focus on their own offseason regimen.

However, if your Major League Baseball season was cut short for whatever reason, it’s generally a good idea to get some extra work in down south, like Juan Lagares has done. Unfortunately, the risk that comes along with that is also worrisome. Thankfully, our boy Juan’s injury doesn’t seem to be anything to worry about.

This leads us to why Cabrera decided to play in Venezuela this time around. He played all year with the Mets, and struggled through some knee issues. Of course, he didn’t need any surgery, so we’re assuming he’s feeling a lot better than we had imagined.

Cabrera is just 31 years old, and is just getting better all-around. It’s likely he just wanted to stay in good shape and play baseball for a few weeks before resting a little again. He is joining the Leones deep into the season, in hopes of making a playoff push, so he won’t be playing an entire winter league season either.

Cabrera will also be taking part in the World Baseball Classic with Venezuela this spring. This much workload concerns me a tiny little bit because honestly, I’d rather he just be hanging out at home resting as much as possible until the season officially starts.

Nevertheless, if Cabrera earned anything this past year, it was respect for how well he knows his own body and what he can put it through. Hopefully he stays injury-free and gets sharp right in time for Opening Day and the grueling season that lies ahead next year.